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by Philip Gardiner
from
Scribd Website
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Philip Gardiner
author of 'The Shining Ones',
'The Serpent Grail', 'Gnosis:
The Secret of Solomon's Temple Revealed', 'Secrets of the
Serpent: In Search of our Sacred Past' and 'Proof: Does
God Exist?' |
This is the tale of one of the earliest
of all origins of secret societies, and from where is derived much
of the terminology and symbolism still used today by the Freemasons,
Rosicrucians and many others.
It is the tale of
the Watchers
- otherwise known as the 'sons of God' and in Hebrew as Eyrim
(Irim).
In doing so we
 shall
be taking a look at the very origins of the first secret societies
and the influences of astrotheology and serpent worship upon them.
We must first turn to
Sumeria.
Zecharia Sitchin in
The Stairway to Heaven, states:
"The Akkadians called their
predecessors Shumerians, and spoke of the Land of Shumer. It was
in fact the biblical Land of Shin'ar.
It was the land whose name
- Shumer - literally meant the Land of the Watchers.
It
was indeed the Egyptian Ta Neter - Land of the Watchers, the
land from which gods had come to Egypt."
So Sumeria could mean 'Land of the
Watchers', and it is from this Land that the Elohim or
Shining Ones who governed the Watchers also came.
This is the
land of origins and the governing gods.
Julian Jaynes in The Origin of Consciousness in the
Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, tells us something interesting
about these governing gods:
"Throughout Mesopotamia, from the
earliest times of Sumer and Akkad, all lands were owned by gods
and men were their slaves. Of this, the cuneiform texts leave no
doubt whatever.
Each city-state had its principal god, and the
king was described in the very earliest written documents that
we have as 'the tenant farmer of the god.'''
Anybody who has seen Stargate
will now see just where this modern TV show first got its ideas. So
let's just take a look at these Elohim for a moment to find
out who these 'gods' were that supposedly enslaved men and were in
charge of the Watchers.
Elohim
The term used often in the Old Testament (and other texts outside of
it as in the Muslim Allah = Elah) for the Lord.
This is an incorrect usage, as the term is plural and means 'Shining
Ones'.
We can see this plurality in the text from Genesis 1:26:
'And God
said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.'
And again
in Genesis 6:2,
'The sons of god saw the daughters
of men that they were fair.'
This term 'sons of god' is literally 'sons of gods' and
comes from ben ha-elohim, 'sons of the shining ones'.
The term in fact seems to have spread around the globe with man in
his very language.
-
The Sumerian EL means
simply bright or shining
-
the Old Irish Aillil
means shining
-
Old Cornish EL means
shining
-
Elf means shining - hence
Elves as tall/mysterious angelic beings
-
Inca Illa is bright or to
shine
-
Babylonian Ellu is to
shine,
...to name just a few that have sprung up
worldwide from the same Sumerian source.
Baal, the deity often spoken of as the 'Lord' in the Bible,
is also seen as a shining one in the Old Testament and is
called the Owner. At that time there were many 'Owners' or
shining ones, in fact there was one for each village. These are the
governors of men.
To the Hebrews the Elohim were nature divinities from ancient
Sumerian times.
According to General Albert Pike, the famous
Masonic Historian, in
Morals and Dogma, the Elohim
were the 'host of heaven', ascending and descending to pass messages
to and from god or the leader (Yahweh.)
The host of heaven were of course the stars in the night sky
humanized.
Some of the shining ones were termed Watchers and are akin to
the angels of the Lord. Yahweh Elohim means simply
'leader of the shining ones'.
So, now we have these plural Elohim or shining ones as
gods being above even the kings and supplying Watchers - to watch
over man.
The Egyptian Ta Neter that Sitchin mentions resembles
the Egyptian Ntr, a name for the father god Ptah and
other gods and which means guardian or watcher. Ta-Neter is
also the name for the Red Sea straits, which connected Mesopotamia
and Egypt and is known as the place of the gods.
The Neter or
Ntr word means and is derived from the concept of neutrality
and is simply the place between, the path between the pillars or the
place between awake and asleep and is the neutral state an adept
must enter to discover himself and access the 'shining'
enlightenment.
The stark fact of the matter is that in the same way a Pharaoh of
Egypt was a god-on-Earth, so too priests of the Elohim
(stars) were stars-on-Earth.
The Egyptian
Book of the Dead calls these
watchers:
"Anubis and Horus in the form of
Horus the sightless. Others, however, say that they are the Tchatcha, who bring to nought the operations of their knives;
and others say that they are the chiefs of the Sheniu chamber."
So even in ancient Egypt by the time of
the writing of the Book of the Dead, there was confusion.
According Sitchin in
The Wars of Gods and Men:
"They had come to Egypt, the
Egyptians wrote, from Ta-Ur, the 'Far/Foreign Land,' whose name
Ur meant 'oldest' but could also have been the actual place name
- a place well known from Mesopotamian and biblical records: the
ancient city of Ur."
We should note at this point that this
Ur is the same place that the Father of the world's three
great religions, Abraham, is also said to have trained.
According to The Legend of Votan (note similarity with the
Nordic Wotan and who is said to have come from across the
sea) from Mesoamerica, this Votan was the serpent who was a
descendent of the race of Can and was called a guardian or
watcher, amazingly similar to Canaan as such people as Zelia
Nuttal in Papers of the Peabody Museum has suggested.
These Canaanites are implicated in many places revolving around the
shining ones who were also known as the original serpent priests
[1].
Indeed the serpent was known in the language of Canaan
variously as Aub, Ab; Oub, Ob; Oph, Op; Eph, Ev. In the Mayan
language 'Can' also means serpent, as in Cuculcan the bird
serpent, and just as in the Ancient Sumerian Acan and the
Scottish Can for serpent (which is where we get the
word 'canny' like the wise snake.)
Vulcan - sounding like Votan
and Wotan - the Roman god of fire, comes from the Babylonian
Can for serpent and Vul for fire, showing an
etymological link across thousands of miles and meaning therefore
that Vulcan is the shining serpent.
Indeed even the very
center of the Christian world,
the Vatican, comes from the words vatis for
prophet and can for serpent, making the Vatican
a place of serpent prophecy.
The Hebrews termed these Watchers as nun resh'ayin meaning
'those who watch'.
In the Greek this is translated as
gigantes or giants, a race that even the 907 BC writer
Hesiod featured as being monstrous (due to their
serpentine aspect no doubt.) Now we can understand the role of
the giants [2] that are seen across the world of folklore as the
presence of the Watchers!
Enoch in
1 Enoch 20:1-8 even gives us the
names of these Watchers, and I noted that they were all
subtitled shining ones with the el ending:
"And these are the names of the holy
angels who watch.
Uriel, one of the holy angels, who
is over the world and over Tartarus.
Raphael, one of the holy angels, who
is over the spirits of men.
Raguel, one of the holy angels who
takes vengeance on the world of the luminaries.
Michael, one of the holy angels, to
wit, he that is set over the best part of mankind and over
chaos.
Saraqael, one of the holy angels,
who is set over the spirits, who sin in spirit.
Gabriel, one of the holy angels, who
is over Paradise and the serpents and the Cherubim.
Remiel, one of the holy angels, whom
God set over those who rise."
Note that Gabriel, the messenger
who told of the birth of Jesus and who passed on wisdom to
Mohammad, is in charge of the serpents. Remiel is
over those who rise - those seeking enlightenment.
In the
Testament of Amram (manuscript B)
we have a remarkable insight into the aspect of these shining
Watchers:
"I asked them, 'Who are you, that
you are thus empowered over me?' They answered me, 'We have been
empowered and rule over all mankind.'
They said to me, 'Which of
us do you choose to rule you?' I raised my eyes and looked. One
of them was terrifying in his appearance, like a serpent,
his cloak many colored yet very dark.
And I looked again, and in
his appearance, his visage like a viper, and wearing
exceedingly, and all his eyes... I replied to him, 'This Watcher,
so is he?'
He answered me, 'This Watcher... and his three names
are Belial and Prince of darkness and King of
Evil."
The Mosaic Book of Jubilees, was
originally called the Apocalypse of Moses as it was
supposedly written by Moses whilst on Mount Sinai and dictated by a
watcher or angel.
This book was intended as a history of the days of
old and reveals the purpose of the Watchers:
"For in his days the angels of
the Lord [Elohim - shining ones] descended upon the earth
[came down from their mountain stronghold] - those who are named
Watchers - that they should instruct the children of men, that
they should do judgment and uprightness upon the earth."
These Watchers, according to the
Book of Jubilees are the sons of god spoken of in
Genesis sent from their heavenly abode to instruct men. What seems
to have occurred is that they fell from grace by mating with the
daughters of men and were thus outcast - giving us the fallen angels
we are familiar with today.
However, according to A Dictionary of
Angels, not all these Watchers descended from the heavenly abode
and were termed holy Watchers, residing in the fifth heaven.
As Enoch himself had testified
against these fallen Watchers he was protected by the ruling
shining ones and transported to the Garden of Eden (Eden
means plateau and is therefore a specific place):
"And I Enoch was blessing the Lord
of majesty and the King of the ages,
and lo! The Watchers called
me - Enoch the scribe - and said to me:
'Enoch, thou scribe of
righteousness, go,
declare to the Watchers of the heaven who
have left the high heaven,
the holy eternal place,
and have
defiled themselves with women,
and have done as the children of
the earth do,
and have taken unto themselves wives:
Ye have
wrought great destruction on the earth:
And ye shall have no
peace nor forgiveness of sin:
and inasmuch as they delight
themselves in their children,
The murder of their beloved ones
shall they see,
and over the destruction of their children shall
they lament,
and shall make supplication unto eternity,
but
mercy and peace shall ye not attain'."
1 Enoch 10:3-8.
According to Andrew Collins in
From the Ashes of Angels - The Forbidden Legacy of a Fallen Race,
the fallen Watchers swear an oath and bind themselves
together.
The place of this action is called Ardis, the
fabled summit of Mount Hermon, which derives from the Hebrew word
for curse (harem).
Following these actions of the fallen Watchers
the shining ones called down a great flood upon the earth to destroy
the offspring and Noah is warned to build a great ship to escape the
impending doom.
There was obviously some great battle between the
dissenters and the shining ones and the loyal Watchers, which
gave rise to Michael, Gabriel and the others to slay
the remaining fallen Watchers.
The flood is the symbolic idea of the
later cleansing of the land (and mind) and the restarting of the
human race (or self) on track with the shining ones ideals - a
probable merging of a folk memory of some great catastrophe and the
actual event.
There were other catastrophes written up as being the
judgment of the remaining Watchers, which must simply be folk
memories of actual catastrophes that occurred and were blamed upon
the transgressions of the fallen Watchers.
Indeed, even the spirits of these
fallen Watchers are blamed for future evils as Enoch points out:
"And the spirits of the giants
afflict, oppress, destroy, attack, do battle, and work
destruction on the earth, and cause trouble: they take no food,
but nevertheless hunger and thirst, and cause offenses.
And these spirits shall rise up
against the children of men and against the women, because they
have proceeded them."
1 Enoch 12
Notable revelations admitted by the
Watchers to the sons of man were knowledge of the signs of the
earth, writing, meteorology, geography and geodesy - all implying
that these shining ones understood the energy and power of the earth
and its electromagnetism, not to mention the movements of the
planets.
There are many fables of these times from across the world
of great builders, architects and magicians all relating entirely
back to these shining ones origins.
Much of this myth of the Watchers is found to be within the
tales of wars and merging of peoples across the Middle East - between Canaanites, Egyptians, Sumerians and even Asian
civilizations. But, the underlying current is a belief in the
Shining Ones as leaders, with Watchers doing their bidding - evolving into God with his Angelic beings.
We know that mankind deified the 'men of renown', the same
Anunnaki/Anakim to whom this refers
and therefore we know that these shining ones were mere men - the difference being that the state of illumination (shining) had
set them apart.
The term Anunnaki, Anakim and even
Nefilim means 'those who came down to earth from heaven' and is
a reference to their position and location on the plateau of Eden
(Eden means plateau). They looked down on the people below - watched.
They represented the sun, moon and planets on earth. It
does not, as some would have us believe imply that they came from
the stars, but were representatives of the celestial deities.
The truth of the story of the Shining Ones and their
Watchers has been the subject of a purging by many Jewish
authorities, who were understandably concerned that the myths of
these angels and their worship would detract the people from the
worship of the one god.
With this end, the
Book of Enoch and the Book of
Jubilees mentioned above, were stricken from the accepted list and
are now known as Apocrypha or Pseudographa.
What we do know though, is that these
Watchers continued in what has been described as the
underground stream and were called egregors.
"The Kabbalah names 72...national
angelic regents, which the Hebrews call Elohim [Shining Ones];
the metaphysical technical term Egregors is also used for
them. Derived from the Greek word egreoros, it means
'watcher' or 'guardian.' The office of a Watcher is to protect
from outside pressures a region or ethnic group assigned to its
care.
The region is always measured off
from another posing a threat of some sort to it. A given group
of persons (the group of those being protected) is 'tied' to a
certain area of jurisdiction...
Here, too, we meet the 'riddle of
the founding of cities and states... '
What is more, both the
ancient Romans, and quite recently the Chinese, have recognized
the existence of guardian spirits set over cities.
Indeed, one author reports as
follows on the occult was wages on enemy cities by ancient Rome:
'The Romans, when besieging a
city, made a habit of carefully enquiring the name of the
city and of its guardian spirit. When they knew these, they
would summon the guardian spirit of the city and its
inhabitants, and conquer it'."
Willy Schrodter,
from: Commentaries on The Occult
Philosophy of Agrippa
Egregor
The term is Greek and means to 'rouse from sleep', be 'excited
by passion', to 'be awake' or 'to watch' - incredibly etymologically linked to the enlightenment experience
of the awakening or the place between awake and asleep and
therefore knowledge of the unconscious world.
The root of the
word appears to be the Syrian ir or er, and reverts to
Watcher and is also related to Ur, the home of Abraham.
It also became a Gnostic and mystic term thought to mean 'collective
unconsciousness' but linked with the Watchers by M. Denning
and O. Phillips in The Magical Philosophy.
Eliphas Levi (19th century magician and mystic) speaks of
these egregors on numerous occasions and even links them to
the giants or Watchers spoken of in the Book of Enoch saying that
they:
"take shape and have appeared in the
guise of giants: these are the egregors of the Book of
Enoch... Termed the celestial watchers or egregors, by the
ancients."
Levi also calls these egregors
the Anakim (shining ones, men of renown, giants) of the Bible
and that they are expressed in the myths of various cultures - just
as we have been finding.
It therefore appears that Levi (and others) knew of these
egregors or Watchers from the recently translated and
widely (in mystic circles) available Book of Enoch.
Levi was well
known to have Rosicrucian tendencies and this movement too was aware
of the meaning of the word. In fact they believed that the
egregors were still in existence and were in the background.
There are a whole host of 16th and 17th
century mystics, including Dr
John Dee, who were also aware of the Book of Enoch
and plagiarized it extensively.
In fact Dee has been implicated as
one of the founders of the Rosicrucian's as well as being a spy of
the realm under Queen Elizabeth.
All of this brings to mind the
texts taken down by Dee and his cohort Edward Kelly that were
dictated by Angels! These texts surprisingly deal with the
'old ones.' Some of the texts came into Dee's possession (and were
therefore not given by angels) whilst he was in the service of
Rudolph II in Prague.
Amazingly, the infamous
Necronomicon tells us about a
'fabulous city of Irem.'
Irem of the Pillars is part of Arabian
magical lore and was built by the Jinn or Angels and
were possibly also Watch Towers - 'towers of the Watchers'. The
Hebrew Erim means to awaken.
The Pillars were built on the instructions of the Lord of the tribe
of Ad (meaning eternity), who are referred to in Hebrew terms as
Nephilim - the giants or Watchers of the Shining Ones and
referred to in the Book of Enoch as Irim.
According to
Arabian legend this Irem is located in Rub al Khali, which
means the empty quarter or the void.
The void could be a real barren
location or a term for the neutral state of mind aimed at by the
adept. Archaeologists have though identified the very spot of this
infamous Irem as being the lost city of Ubar.
One further link with Enoch to the mysteries of the modern
Alchemists, mystics and seers is seen in the 13th century texts of
A. Bar Hebraeus who spent many years investigating the
ancient texts at the Library of Maragha and gives us this
unique insight:
"The ancient Greeks say that Enoch
is Harmis Trismaghistos."
The Chronography of Bar Hebraeus,
translated by E. W. Budge 1932
This is none other than Hermes
Trismegistus [3], the thrice great Hermes, whom all mystics hold
in high esteem as having passed down ancient and profound secrets
and who is seen as the father of almost all Western secret orders.
We also have here evidence that the Book of Enoch was understood as
far back and as late as the 13th century.
Whether or not the Shining Ones, Watchers or
egregor were actually physically around during this vast expanse
of time is obviously the subject of debate, but what this does show,
is that the ancient influence of the Shining Ones was certainly
still in existence.
The Thesaurus Temporum translated into Latin in the mid 17th
century even gives us a chronology of events surrounding these
egregors.
In 1000 BC they descended (primus egregorum descensus) and by
1487 BC they had taken Enoch to Paradise (Enoch transferatur in
paradisum) due to the dissent of the fallen Watchers.
It seems then that the extremely ancient concept and story of the
Shining Ones was still very much alive and being propagated
secretly by the mystics of the last few hundred years. These were
very much part and parcel of their hidden secrets.
The question
arises,
why did they feel the need to hide such secrets?
Today the egregor is seen in occult circles as an energy
form - akin to the Kundalini. According to the Rosicrucian
website:
"Quickly, from the mystical point of
view, Egregor(e) (a word of Latin origin) is the set of
thought-forms produced by a group of individuals on the Astral
plane.
The Egregor(e) may change over time,
according to the quality of the group's members. Each group has
a distinct Egregor(e).
Any group which has the ability to
get in synchronization with a specific Egregor(e) may claim
authenticity and continuation from earlier groups which used or
developer this egregor(e)."
And the Martinist Order of the
Knights of Christ, who claim to be heirs to the Rosicrucians and
others say:
"Its goal is to set the human being
free from the hold of the Prince of this World and of achieving
the Mystical Union of the self-aware personality (conscience)
with the individual profundity (super-conscience).
Its members
strive to have access to mastery by reuniting with the 'Kingdom
of the Center', propitious with the descent of the Paraclet,
sent by Christ, in addition to the assistance rendered by
the attachment, on the side of the Initiator with the Egregore,
protector of the Secret Chain."
"An apostalic succession of power," suggests John Michael
Greer in Inside a Magical Lodge, is "a basic function
of the egregor."
"'Worship me!' cries the Egregora. 'I am the son of God;
you are nothing but a worthless and sinful creature, damned from
birth and destined to hell were it not for my sacrifice; and
without me you will never reach heaven!'."
Marcelo Ramos Motta,
from Letter to a Brazilian Mason
Unexpurgated.
"The egregore is a group spirit that serves to remind the
initiate of his or her goals.
It informs and guides the
individual and it protects the living chain of brotherhood. The
living chain of brotherhood is entered into when a Setian
performs a rite of their own creation intended to protect and
enhance the Temple of Set.
The egregore protects the
brotherhood by letting them know their enemies are there. A
symbolic representation of the egregore is used to
maintain a link to the Prince of Darkness."
Sir Ormsond IV°,
from Saturnian Principles.
"The Sufi Saint, Mansour Al-Hallaj, is almost identical
to the Masonic egregor, Hiram Abif, in respect to
the circumstances of his death...
In masonry, the Two-Headed
Eagle is a cognate of Baphomet, a chimera-like composite animal
that represents the Universal Force of matter. In some Gnostic
Systems this would be the Demiurgios, or 'Lord of this
World.'"
Malgwyn,
from Yesidism, Zoroastrianism in
Western Secret Societies.
What we can see here then is the extent
of the influence of the first origins of secret societies, both in
culture and texts.
These Shining Ones are the first on paper.
They have a structure and a basis of authority. They rule over man
and are all-wise, having their 'Watchers' to ensure that their
instructions are carried out. Either the Shining Ones are
still in power now generations later, or
the secret societies of the globe
have copied the methods, structure and symbols of these first few.
The great religions of the world have all been created by
some secret method, which we now know to be the generative cause of
religion - the enlightenment process.
This enlightenment process mirrored the heavens - it was the
internal shining, the bright light of illumination. It was the inner
sun, the light of the father within our own mind.
Those who shone
were elements of the sun on earth, utilizing the inner solar energy
to access the knowledge base of the unconscious world. In this way
they were truly the gods of men.
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